The reason why agency0structure and micro0macro debates remain unresolved is the bad essentialist habit of treating such pairs as opposite natural kinds. Once variation is allowed, agency and structure, or micro and macro, are temporary poles bracketing a continuum, with social entities moving along this continuum over time. Explaining these transformations from agency into structure, or micro into macro, and vice versa is the challenge for explanatory theory. This challenge is met by switching to a constructivist level of second-order observing. Then, agency and structure become variable devices or frames different observers might use to perform different sorts of cultural work.

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For a long time people have questioned what the "best" sewer system is for limiting the pollution load released into the receiving waters. In this paper the traditional separate and combined sewer systems are compared using a pollution load balance. The investigation is based on measured concentration data for a range of pollutant parameters in the sewer from the new database "ATV-DVWK Datenpool 2001". The approach also accounted for the wastewater treatment plant outflow which contributes to the total pollutant load considerably. In spite of a number of neglected effects, the results show that the separate system is superior to the combined for some parameters only, such as nutrients, whereas for other parameters, e.g. heavy metals and COD, the combined system yields less total loads. Any uncritical preference of the separate system as a particularly advantageous solution is thus questionable. Individual investigations case by case are recommended.

In the sociology of racial prejudice, two major paradigms can be distinguished: Cultural-environmental and social class or conflict paradigms. On the basis of Durkheimian theory, it is hypothesized that cultural-environmental variables (education, knowledge) offer stronger and more consistent explanations of racial prejudice than status variables (self-perceived class position, occupational prestige, income). To test this hypothesis, National Opinion Research Center (NORC) data are analyzed. Findings corroborate the major cultural-environmental hypothesis that racial prejudice emerges from ritually dense sociocultural lifeforms. Little support is found for the claim that prejudice arises from class conflict and competition over material resources.

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